analyzing them, and his vanity is flattered by the trust reposed in his
perspicacity. We realize how unnecessary minute analysis of character and
long descriptions are in reading a drama by Shakespeare, in which the
characters are so vividly presented to us in action and speech, without
the least interference of the author in description, that we regard them
as persons with whom we might have real relations, and not as bundles of
traits and qualities. True, the conditions of dramatic art and the art of
the novel are different, in that the drama can dispense with
delineations, for its characters are intended to be presented to the eye;
but all the same, a good drama will explain itself without the aid of
actors, and there is no doubt that it is the higher art in the novel,
when once the characters are introduced, to treat them dramatically, and
let them work out their own destiny according to their characters. It is
a truism to say that when the reader perceives that the author can compel
his characters to do what he pleases all interest in them as real persons
is gone. In a novel of mere action and adventure, a lower order of
fiction, where all the interest centres in the unraveling of a plot, of
course this does not so much matter.

Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused myself in looking up some of the
localities made famous in Scott's romances, which are as real in the mind
as any historical places. Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian." I
was surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to my
recollection of it. Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, and
even of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on with
increasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott's
novels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one character
after another. Yet, when I had finished the book and put it away, a
singular thing happened. It suddenly came to me that in reading it I had
not once thought of Scott as the maker; it had never occurred to me that